


Gonna take my time

by Katarik



Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: Courtship, M/M, Mindfuck, Pining, Seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-12
Updated: 2010-10-12
Packaged: 2017-10-12 15:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katarik/pseuds/Katarik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't say you're happy/Out there without me/I know you can't be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gonna take my time

**Author's Note:**

> Title and summary from Depeche Mode's "It's No Good." I originally tried to write this story for the springkink prompt _Transformers G1, Starscream/Skyfire: temptation and seduction - All's fair in love and war_.

Skyfire is beginning to become accustomed to this planet. That in itself is not so hard; Skyfire had always intensely enjoyed the process of settling himself into whatever planet he was studying.

He has yet to become accustomed to the _Ark_ , and to the Autobots. The rhythms of their lives are very strange, and Skyfire has always rather disliked the process of fitting himself into a place that was not meant for him. In some ways, it is easier to simply retreat into his studies. He recharges outside until Grapple and Hoist have retrofitted a section of the _Ark_ into something he can use -- he rather likes the heat of a desert day, and the cold is nothing compared to space. Skyfire had, once, apologized for the bother. The lecture he had received from both of them had taught Skyfire better than to ever again so much as imply that the Autobots as a whole -- minus such mechs as Cliffjumper, who will perhaps never cease to see Decepticon purple on his chest plating; Skyfire knows he is merely trying to protect his friends and his Prime from a potential traitor, but it is still preferable to be elsewhere when Cliffjumper is present. -- are not very glad to have his presence.

It is still easier to separate himself than it is to learn how to retrofit himself into the spaces they try to make for him.

Sometimes Skyfire can nearly forget how long he was asleep. Sometimes it is as though he has blinked like an organic, and in the intervening astrosecond everything has disappeared. There are times Skyfire is afraid to offline his optics, for fear of what he will see when he onlines them again.

***

Time seems to move more jaggedly now. Vorns upon vorns had passed smoothly, easily, but now human minutes pass so swiftly -- how do they function with so little time? -- and Skyfire can look up to discover that it has been a whole cycle when he had thought perhaps two or three breems had passed. He begins to try to use Terran time measures, trying to catch the time he had lost.

Every astrosecond, now, is something Skyfire tries to savor. He does not always succeed.

***

Learning to live without Starscream remains difficult.

It would be easier if Skyfire could stop *seeing* him. Flashes of silver, red, blue darting above, too quickly to truly be spotted; the ghost of a Seeker form hovering just at the edges of his sensory array, keeping pace with him on solo trips. Quick, hallucinatory bursts of static over a comm channel Skyfire had not used in millions of Terran years, hardcoded into his systems and nearly impossible to remove. Sometimes Skyfire is uncertain whether he is truly sensing Starscream or merely seeing what part of him, unused to solitude -- he is alone, despite the friends he has made in the Ark. None of them are *partner*. He does not like this realization. -- after so long with another mech at his side, wishes to be there.

He has lost Starscream. Starscream should let him alone so that Skyfire can come to peace with the fact of it. But that would be *fair*, would be just and kind, and Starscream had always considered those concepts far too mundane for him to bother with them. Of course that quirk would remain, even now.

Skyfire permits himself an eighth of a breem to remember that fact, thinking of the gleam of Starscream's optics and the sheen of a three-sunned alien dawn over his frame, his petty malice and the touch of his hand on Skyfire's wings, the sheer burning undeniable vitality of him, before he settles back to reworking, again, Wheeljack's control over the Peruvian volcano and pretends his senses are not picking up graceful, fast barrel rolls at seventy thousand feet, tracing out characters older than this planet.

Skyfire has never been a very good liar. He lacks the subskill of lying to himself, as well.

***

Cybertronian comm channels do not have white noise. There can be interference from space debris or solar flares or passage near a black hole, but without suitable conditions it is not possible for a channel to have nothing but fuzzed and useless noise. Vocalizations, certainly, but not a comm channel.

This fact means, of course, that there must be some other explanation for why Skyfire is waking up now with the random buzzing flashes of static grinding through his faceplates. From a channel he does not now use.

If he could think of one, he could perhaps go into recharge again. Skyfire refuses to comm Starscream and demand to know what he is doing to make that channel wake Skyfire -- he is not surprised by Starscream's pettiness, but Skyfire will not give him the satisfaction of responding to it. It is, surely, only pettiness. Starscream is not hurt, is not trying to reach him. It is only pettiness.

Skyfire does not manage to return to recharge, even when the channel is silent again.

***

There is a package with his name on it. Skyfire takes it from Red Alert numbly, listens silently when the list of what he had done to test the tins and their contents is enumerated for him. It is, Red Alert finishes with palpable irritation, safe by everything he could think to do. But he would still recommend Skyfire destroying them.

That would be very easy. The gravity well for this system's primary is more than powerful enough for Skyfire to simply cruise past it and leave the tins behind before he transformed, punched his engines, and cleared it.

But the Autobots do not have waxes suitable for fliers, and they certainly do not possess Skyfire's preferred lubricant. It had been designed for spaceworthy craft to assist in handling the temperature changes, and Skyfire had run out on the journey here. He had had to borrow Starscream's, and he had never made it home to purchase more.

Skyfire promises Red Alert that he will be careful and escapes, staring at the package on his too-small desk as though it is some predator that will bite him. He does not understand. Starscream had attempted to kill him, had made his opinions on Skyfire's presumed treachery quite clear. Skyfire was an enemy, hated more than most because once he had not been. He could not be anything else. Surely he could not be anything else. Even Starscream is not *that* irrational.

And yet no one else would have access to such a wax, or such a lubricant -- no one else on this planet but him and Starscream would require that type of lubricant, and Skyfire doubts the Autobots are sufficiently accustomed to flight-capable mechs on their side to have thought to give him the gift. Wheeljack or Ratchet could create it from their supplies, but they would simply have *given* it to him. This sort of mysterious-package *drama* is like energon to Starscream, if Skyfire could only think of *why*.

Skyfire would like to be able to ask him.

He wonders if Starscream gave him the gift simply so that Skyfire would have no choice but to think of him again. As though Skyfire is capable of doing other than thinking of him, even now.

Skyfire puts the tins away. Until the next time he clears the atmosphere, and thinks how much easier it would be later with a lubricant designed to make transformation after more smoothly, and knows he could increase his speed inside the troposphere where the Autobots more commonly need him if he had less friction on his hull.

He tells himself these are the only reasons that he unearths the tins and works lubricant inside his transformation seams, over too-stiff gears. He ignores that it would be easier to do so with assistance. His own hands are very pale against his plating, and the sight of them is wrong. Skyfire does not look away, and when he has finished with the lubricant he applies the wax slowly, with great thoroughness, reminding himself with every stroke of the cloth that he will do this alone. There will be neither interruptions nor distractions.

When he is done, his plating gleams, and he can see his own reflected optics in the shine.

Skyfire goes flying. He is not fast enough to outfly the flickers of memory, but when he returns to the _Ark_ he is too tired to dwell on them.

He did not see Starscream on this trip. Skyfire tries to convince himself he is glad. He slips into recharge before he has succeeded.

***

This newest round of static is only static by a bare definition. Skyfire recognizes the rhythms of it, sharp bursts in irregular patterns that are etched into his memory banks. Old codes. Starscream had rarely bothered with codes, preferring his own inimitable flair on wording instead, but this was a code. _Presence required, non-urgent_.

He loses his temper, his patience, his *restraint* with Starscream's game of haunting him in one fast burst back. _Coordinates required._

There is no answer. Skyfire tells himself that he is not disappointed. He is almost telling the truth.

***

He is returning from Huntsville's on-planet space center, detouring endlessly up to break atmo for the sheer pleasure of exiting the planet. Space's empty pressure on his wings as he flies, auto-correcting with easy bursts of his thrusters to match the planet's velocity and revolution. The burning heat of re-entry is warmly comforting, and he is laughing as he breaks back through, rolling to present his undercarriage to the sky, rolling again, long fast dizzying swoops that leave him giddy with the joy of it.

For a moment, he cannot remember why Starscream's sudden presence, rocketing up from below him to curve over Skyfire's rolling frame, lovely and silver-bright, matching him easily, is not exactly right, and the only question is what took him so long.

And then he spots anew, again, the stark emblems on his wings.

There is nothing for Skyfire to defend, no reason whatsoever to hold his ground and fight, and so he flees. He is the single fastest thing on the planet, and he leaves Starscream behind.

He barrel-rolls on the way back to the Ark, trying to recapture the buoyant joy of his space-flight, and finds himself extending his sensor array to look for Starscream's flashing form above him.

He does not attempt it again.

***

After battles which he participates in, which do not happen often and Skyfire knows full well why -- the freedom and flexibility which he grants the Autobots is too useful to risk him in combat unless they need his particular variant on airborne firepower desperately. It is rare that the sheer brute force of his guns is the best option. Skyfire is glad of that. He would much rather be useful as the transportation he was designed to be and the scientist he made himself than as a weapon. He left the Decepticons because he would not be an executioner. -- he typically visits Ratchet conscientiously. Skyfire is aware this makes him near to unique among the Ark residents. He does not mind. He likes Ratchet's muttered complaints masking his concern and the grace in his swift-moving hands.

It is rare for him to find familiarity in this fascinating and wonderful planet, even so slight, and Skyfire sees no reason to turn away from it if such is not required.

And then he goes to the lab he has quietly set aside for himself and catalogues specimens until his systems offline from sheer exhaustion. Skyfire considers the trade well worth it: he has completed useful and valuable work, and when he is focused he cannot think of Starscream's shrieking defiance and the number of mechs in Ratchet's medbay for null-ray damage.

Skyfire does not regret the choice he made in the Arctic. He regrets only that it was necessary.

He misses Starscream. Sometimes Skyfire hates himself for that insult to his new friends the Autobots. That never solves the problem.

***

Everything which has ever defined him -- the air, science, the simple joy of an expedition -- has Starscream in it and of it, twined through it. He is an alloy of himself and Starscream's ghost. There is nothing in Skyfire's life that does not have Starscream inscribed there, Skyfire's existence scattered with the careless detritus Starscream leaves behind him.

***

He begins to grow accustomed to Starscream's flight delineating his, sharp lines of silver above or below or far to the side of his own movements. He does not make efforts to take solo patrols or missions -- such actions would imply an eagerness to feel Starscream's form outlined on Skyfire's radar, and that is unworthy of Skyfire. He knows what Starscream is. He knows what he himself is not. -- and he is not disappointed when such missions are not accompanied by a far-off and oddly silent companion. If he is, it is only because if Starscream is, for whatever reason his glitching processor has selected, with him, he is not elsewhere being. Himself.

(Each mission which takes him into the upper limits of the atmosphere, or beyond it, is sooner or later marked with Starscream's presence, the flash of his frame darting through Skyfire's field of vision or the brief brush of his energy fields, a consummate display of skill and familiarity to come so close and for neither of them to be damaged, and for a moment, every time, Skyfire is entirely and utterly happy.)

***

Skyfire considers his trips to Peru both a duty and a pleasure. He must, every so often, re-confirm that Wheeljack's mechanism properly keeps the volcano in check, and ascertain that the native humans retain the standard of living to which they had become accustomed before the Decepticon destruction of their ancient crystal. So far, they always have.

He likes to see their region of the world, likes the color and life of the continent Spike and Sparkplug refer to as South America. The incredible variety of flora and insectoid fauna near the great river in the center of the continent is stunning, and Skyfire spends a great deal of his time attempting to learn the languages of its native peoples so that he may learn their names for the creatures and flowers he wishes to study.

But more than almost anything else, he loves the warmth of this area. There is no snow here, and the rain pounds down on his plating caress-hard, seeping between seams and welds in a trickle of wet heat, and Skyfire tips his face back into the wash of it and is *warm*.

He knows, now, that such comfort is not a guarantee, and he savors every second of it.

***

Skyfire does not regret his choice to leave the Decepticons and join the Autobots instead. He does not; it was the right decision. But right now he can process nothing past the absence of Starscream, the fact that he has neither seen nor heard nor sensed anything of him in nearly nine Terran *months*, no matter what missions Skyfire takes and how high he flies, screams across human skies at speeds and heights that nothing else in this galaxy could match -- it is a declaration of who he is, where he is, that Skyfire is aware is reckless and always forgets under the rush of wind scouring his paint -- and he is always alone.

He regrets his parting from Starscream. He regrets that it had to be done. He regrets.

 _Please_ , he sends, the first usage of that channel he has initiated since before the human species came to be. _Starscream, please --_

There is no response.

Skyfire sends his plea again in an hour, and another hour, and a third. He slips into recharge to silence through the channel.

***

 _Presence required, non-urgent._

Skyfire comes to attention immediately, the static-signal the first sign of Starscream's continued existence in ten months. _Coordinates required,_ he sends back, and _Presence required, urgent. Urgent. Urgent._

He takes only enough time to clear away his soil samples and restore his lab to order, the habit of tidiness trained into him long ago, before he leaves the _Ark_ behind, heading as fast as he can move in-atmo for the coordinates flashing in his processor.

It takes him approximately fifteen human minutes to reach Starscream, his sleek and bright-painted form visible from forty thousand feet, and Skyfire dives, shifts to mech form in the moment it takes for Starscream to look up and smile before Skyfire tumbles him over, and Starscream's triumph-laced laughter turns to a moan, and the only thing Skyfire can say is Starscream's name, and "please," static-laden and breaking, and "more."

***

"You were always mine," Starscream says, his voice quiet and smugly assured, and only Skyfire would hear the edge of need in the softness of his voice. His hands are gentle stroking Skyfire's chest plating, melted blue paint streaking over the scraped and red-flecked section where an Autobot symbol had been before the sheer force of Starscream's claiming had sanded it away.

"Yes," Skyfire answers in return, one thumb smoothing over Starscream's white-smeared cockpit, and waits for the next ending.  



End file.
